Explicit tweeter quits classroom

A TEACHER at a leading Melbourne high school has reportedly quit her job after posting raunchy pictures of herself and making explicit sexual references on a public Twitter account.

The teacher at Glen Waverley Secondary College posted a number of ''selfies'' on the Twitter account, which had more than 1000 followers. The account was deleted on Friday afternoon.

It is believed the school principal, Gerard Schiller, became aware of the account last week. It is not known if any of the school's 1900 students had accessed the tweets. The account was created at least five months ago.

The teacher used a pseudonym online and never named the school. She posted pictures showing her face, talked about working as a high school teacher and made references to the Glen Waverley area. She was still tweeting to her followers last Thursday, telling them that she ''left work early to come home and masturbate''.

On November 20, she posted: ''The most soothing thought that gets me to sleep at night is being f---ed hard.'' An hour later, she tweeted about a year-8 French class she was teaching.

The teacher refused to comment when contacted by Fairfax Media on Saturday.

Mr Schiller said the teacher was not sacked or asked to resign, but had ''taken some leave next year and that had been decided months ago''.

However, the teacher tweeted on December 12 that she was ''leaving the place''.

Mr Schiller said he told the teacher to remove her Twitter account after the school received an anonymous complaint this month. He did not alert the Education Department or ask to see any of the teacher's Twitter posts.

''She assured me that none of the students would know about her account … No parent or student had indicated to me that they'd seen anything,'' Mr Schiller said.

Cyber safety expert Susan McLean said it was ''naive in the extreme'' to think people in the school community did not know about the Twitter account.

''Everything you do on Twitter is all traceable and permanent. Older teachers who haven't grown up with social media are more reserved online, but the teachers under 30 generally don't have a clue,'' Ms McLean said.

''When you hold a position of responsibility that is viewed highly in the community, there is an obligation that you will behave in a way that is far superior to the rest of the population.''

Parents Victoria president Sharron Healy said social media matters needed to be taken seriously by schools and the state teaching profession regulator, the Victorian Institute of Teaching.

''In a time when schools and parents are fighting hard to teach students about online responsibility and that their digital footprint remains forever, it is inconceivable that a teacher would post such offensive comments,'' Ms Healy said. ''Tweeting messages like these is unacceptable from anyone.''